Having debuted in 2004, her game discography is pretty extensive. She’s also recorded songs for more than 15 anime series. Her and two other singers recently formed the group “SV Tribe” to provide songs for the Majikoi anime adaptation.

Ceui’s been an active singer since 2000, but she didn’t sign to a major label until 2007. She’s often described by many as angelic, both in her appearance and in the sound of her voice. There are also some striking similarities to Riya, but out of the two, Ceui unquestionably has the better vocal range.

Chata’s been part of various doujin circles and has her own called “Usagi Kinoko”. She’s very good friends with Haruka Shimotsuki and Rekka Katakiri, even going so far as to form the group “Shimochamin”. Her major debut album was a collaboration with famous video game composer, Yoko Shimomura.

Denkare is a metal band comprised of four members, with Karen (pictured to the left) as the vocalist. Many of their songs are featured in Black Cyc’s games, which I find quite fitting given the dark themes. Although it hasn’t been documented anywhere, at least to my knowledge, Karen is very clearly the same singer from the band Yousei Teikoku, a group known for their anime music.

Duca has a very strong, distinct voice that is unmistakable. In 2008, she appeared under the stage name “Mao” for the express purpose of releasing anime music. It took me all of five seconds to realize it was her. Up until that point, her identity had been a complete mystery to me, as she hadn’t shown herself in any photos.

FripSide is a synthpop duo originally formed by Nao and Satoshi Yaginuma (right). After Nao departed from the band in 2009 to pursue a solo career, Yoshino Nanjou (left) replaced her as the new lead vocalist. Many of their earlier songs can be found in games from publisher Visual Arts. Today, the band’s music does very well on the Oricon charts.

I’ve been listening to Shimotsuki for many years, and she still remains as one of my favorite artists to date. She has sang theme songs for the Atelier and Ar Tonelico RPG series and is one of the main composers for the ethnic, fantasy-based soundtracks. She’s contracted to provide music for a wide range of visual novels, but some of her best songs can be found with developer Innocent Grey. I’m a proud owner of all of her albums.

She’s one of the veterans of the industry at 41 years of age. Her debut came in 2000 when she sang the theme song for Front Wing’s Kanaria. In 2007, she started the talent management and music production agency S Inc.

Kanako is one of my top 3 favorite singers and for a number of good reasons. She has the best vocal range of them all, and when you pair her with a good music producer, the results are spectacular. Recently, she’s been getting a lot of much-needed exposure due to her involvement with Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate.

Lia was one of the original I’ve Sound members who signed on around the same time as Kotoko. She now works with Key Sounds Label. One of her first and most successful songs is “Tori no Uta”, the opening theme for AIR. To this day, it still ranks highly among the top 100 VN/Anime songs of all time as voted by fans in Japan and very often takes the #1 spot. She is not a one-hit wonder, however. She doesn’t do main themes very often, but when she does, they are almost always godly. Some of her other notable works include the openings to Hoshiuta, Clannad After Story, Tomoyo After, and Angel Beats.

Another prominent member of I’ve Sound, she is best known for her anime theme songs with the Geneon Enterntainment label, many of which are a collaboration with Kotoko. She still puts out the occasional opening for eroge.

Makkun is an industry veteran with more experience than any singer on this list. She has been active since 1989 and has recorded more than 50 singles and 20 albums. In addition to her solo career, she’s a known member of the supergroup “JAM Project.” The majority of her music is found in anime, but an occasional eroge OP will turn up every year.

Again, I don’t know much about her. What I can tell you is that Sakuragawa is credited with one of the most epic songs I’ve ever heard in a VN. Look up the second opening video to Coμ. It can be found on this site.

MELL is an I’ve Sound-produced artist, best known for her song in Black Lagoon. What is most striking about her voice and the thing that separates her from the others is the strong vibrato. She does openings for games but not very often. She has a few tracks from the kinetic novel “Planetarian”.

Minami celebrates her 10th anniversary this year. She has a lot of anime songs in her name, but she’ll forever be remembered as the singer and seiyuu for Age Soft’s Kiminozo and Muv-Luv series of games.

She is known for that akiba-pop, denpa-coined genre of music some of us have come to know and love. It’s an acquired taste though and certainly not for everyone. Listen to Angel Magister’s OP for a pretty good idea. 😉

Miyuki’s voice has become a staple in VN music. It’s something I’ve come to expect after nine years, and I couldn’t imagine it without her. You can see her speak on camera for 11 minutes at her website. Maybe someone will translate for you, because I sure as hell won’t. XD

After her graduation from fripSide in 2009, Nao embarked on a journey as a solo artist. Why did she choose this path? My guess is that her and Satoshi had some creative differences, although they may not have revealed this officially on record. She wanted to go a different direction with her music, as evidenced by the fripSide Nao Project they started before her departure. In the end, I think they’ve both bettered themselves since the split. I’ve enjoyed their music now more than I ever did.

If you don’t laugh at this image, you have no sense of humor. Yes, that really is Katakiri under the cat head. No, she doesn’t just do this for lulz. It’s also to hide her identity, which is not particularly unusual. You can take one guess as to why. She has never shown her face on camera before, to my knowledge. If she has, I’d love to see it. XD

Rita is one of my other top 3 favorite singers. She keeps things semi-anonymous, never actually showing her whole face but showing just enough. The name is obviously a pseudonym. More importantly though, she’s contributed a lot to VN music, with a really impressive discography. Some of her better works can be found in Liar-Soft’s games.

Riya is the lead singer of the pop band Eufonius. Her bandmate, Hajime Kikuchi, provides composition and arrangement on the keyboard. She has sang duets with Haruka Shimotsuki for the Akai Ito visual novel, and arguably her biggest claim to fame is the song “Mag Mell” from Clannad.

I don’t know how well her solo career is going. She doesn’t appear to have been active much since 2010. Could be because of the Cheerful+Colorful band she started with Yuana Miyazawa. She had some good songs a few years ago that I liked anyway.

She’s a fairly new act and someone I’m not familiar with at all. Indeed, she debuted in 2010. I was rather impressed with the song she sang for the yet-to-be-released eroge “Grisaia no Meikyuu”. I will be keeping my ears open for more later.

Swinging Popsicle is a three-member indie pop/rock band with Mineko Fujishima as vocalist. Their only contributions have been a few songs for Nitroplus’ game “Sumaga”. I hadn’t heard of the band prior to this, so it was a nice discovery. I started seeking out the rest of their music as a result.

She is famous for the countless songs she’s written for Circus’ games, going as far back as the original Da Capo. Listening to them now is pretty nostalgic. She has also worked with Rino from CooRie a few times under the name Yozurino*.

Her name is pretty much everywhere these days, so she’s another one of those artists who probably doesn’t need an introduction. Sakakibara is multi-talented and does choreography, singing, dancing, songwriting, and voice acting. When she’s not providing eroge OP that are very akiba-pop in sound, she’s singing in a rock band as Phantasm in Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate.

She’s best known for providing many of the songs in Navel’s games. What separates her from other acts is her ability to play guitar. She has played in the now-defunct band “Honey Bee” as the lead vocalist and guitarist. She’s now the lead singer and bassist for the punk rock band “Pink Doodle Poodle”.

12 comments on “Singers”

Favorite singers would have to be Rekka Katakiri (when she’s not singing in a high-pitched, cute voice although Tokimeki☆Guardian is an exception), Rita, Riryka, Aki Misato, Denkare, Haruka Shimotsuki, Chata, nao… well hell I like all of them actually XD. Surprisingly, I know most of these singers from my past visual novel OP upload days, so it’s kind of a relief to see that I haven’t grown too old XD.

For those who like the cute, akiba-pop style, I’d recommend MOSAIC.WAV, any of the ave;new artists (Saori Sakura is a perfect example), and IOSYS (I remember they did the OP for Circus’s Princess Party, don’t know if they ventured deeper into the VN industry after).

Soft, emotional songs would be in the realm of Haruka Shimotsuki, Ceui, Chata, Duca, yozuca*, and Marie. Great techno OPs belong to Minami Kuribayashi, KOTOKO, fripSide, and Lia. Of course, many of the singers on this list sing in a diverse array of genres, but my list covers the general trend they tend to sing in.

Also, since this is a page about VN music, I think some info about the composers should be in here. Groups like Barbarian on the Groove and Elements Garden have composed some of the best VN music I’ve heard. Hijiri Anze is also a noteworthy guy to mention as well.

Lastly, list is missing a few entries. Ringo Aoba, Murata Ayumi (sings most of the Memories Off series’ OP), and NANA are some singers off the top of my head that have been in the VN music industry for a while now. Other than that, great list!!

Composers will be included a bit later, and I will add to the list as I think of more.

Good call with Ayumi Murata. I completely forgot.

I’ve considered putting up entries for Aoba and NANA, but I can’t find any decent images of them. Kahina (now officially Kahiena) is another singer I’d like to add, but again, no images. Maybe a placeholder will do until something turns up.

RED! -tacklehug- OH GOD. YOU’RE BACK. this is great, now i can catch up on the new eroge. yes yes. OH! it’s miyako by the way. i have a channel up now, but i haven’t done anything on it for a while. http://youtube.com/Miyako3699 if you wanna see it. well um, if you get this message, inbox me on YT, or reply to this comment. thank you so much for coming back! we missed you!

Well, long time no see. You probably don’t remember me, but I loved your videos since your Youtube period. I left years ago, when you started something about sharing music and you did not upload much eroge video. I am very happy to see you being active again, and again I love your videos.

I love most the singers you listed out, and my favorite is I’ve Sound. Well, KOTOKO and Shimamiya Eiko graduated from I’ve, but I still love those singers and I’ve. Also,recently Rita’s song striked my heart alot. Since you mentioned Barbarian on the Groove in Marie’s introduction, maybe you should mention カヒーナ as well. Moreover, I really like Yuria,too. She is not as active as the period before her marriage in the eroge field. Duca and Itou Kanako are my top 10 singers,too. I think Duca is very good at love songs with ANZE HIJIRI and Itou Kanako’s voice is unique. Furthermore, I agree with your comment about Miyuki Hashimoto XD. She could represent the eroge theme songs XD(exaggerated)

Yeah, I’m adding カヒーナ and a bunch of other singers who are missing. I just can’t find time to update the list. I’m tempted to recruit other users to help me with other sections of the site, since I have spread myself too thin.

But if I’m not mistaken, Rie Shirasawa departed from ave;new and now her name is Rie Ayase. I saw it in the Japanese Wikipedia a while ago, but that information is gone now. Here is her blog: http://riemelo.itigo.jp/